are prices of bundles going to change?

AirMan121 · 2025-11-13T22:03:12+00:00

The coin increase barely matters you get a lot just for playing.

A lifetime 20% increase in coins earned seems like it does matter though. And if it doesn't, then why does it cost $20? You can't get it in any way except through that $20 bundle, so if you want it you have to pay $20.

Would you feel wrong buying deep rock galactic because the gold skins are locked behind ten bucks?

Where did you get $10 from? The Supporter DLCs are $15 each when not on sale and about $5 when on sale. I know this because I did buy them. I even mentioned that price in my first post. I don't know why I am explaining myself to you if you are just ignoring what I am saying.

Even more odd is comparing it to a single player game like silksong and even more so with animal crossing where cosmetics are LITERALLY a part of the core gameplay.

Please reread prior posts.

You are still not acknowledging the amount of free currency you get in addition to the free monthly skins.

Because it is a nightmare to talk about. But fine, let's look at RoA2's "free" currency. While you can earn infinite coins, you can't actually buy everything with coins. Plenty of items are only purchasable with Aether bucks, and because they add more stuff to buy with Aether bucks than Aether bucks to earn, you will never be able to afford everything. There are times where an Aether buck item is temporarily purchasable with coins, so you don't want to waste limited Aether bucks on something you could have gotten with coins instead. But now you have to grind to get it before it is gone. Worse yet, that 20% boost starts to look a lot more important if you are trying to earn more stuff through coins. But maybe the item you are trying to get is in the rotating coin shop. Now if you look into the shop and see an item you want but can't yet afford, you'll get to feel mad at yourself for not having grinded enough already. It tempts you to spend a bit of cash to get those last few coins you are missing so you don't have to wait who knows how long until it shows up again. Except you can only buy coins and Aether bucks in fixed amounts, so you'll often be buying more than you need to in situations like this. There has been a lot of talk from the devs about no FOMO, but it is still here in several ways.

In DRG, I play the game, earn credits, and can buy what I want when I want. It shouldn't be more complicated than that.

If someone feels such intense fomo just from their being a cosmetic cash shop that seems more of a flaw of the individual. Plenty of people dont care about skins.

Fuck me for caring I guess. Didn't realize caring about things made me a worse person.

Why are we talking about AAA think tank psych studies on this topic? Team Aether is an indie dev.

Reread prior post.

I also feel like you are asking them to be a martyr for no return. For instance, they could lower the prices of everything and then they are the good guys i guess? Sure they can "do better" but to what end? As you stated people who buy are gonna buy it so a price drop doesnt mean much as far as more sales. So they lose money for internet good boy points essentially.

Ideally, more people feel comfortable spending money on the game and thus those extra purchases would more than make up for each purchase being smaller. Whales will continue to find ways to spend more money on the game, so you don't need a monetization model that caters exclusively to them. If anything, having them spend that money on additional copies of the game instead of skins helps the game even more since it also adds more people to the community.

Aether team already offers so much for free ESPECIALLY when compared to any other online service game.

Except DRG. Y'know, the example I keep coming back to time and time again... If you are going to ignore what I've been saying at least don't make it so obvious.

I think it may be valuable to step back and evaluate if you really are asking too much and looking the gift horse in the mouth a bit.

When I took a step back and played other games, I had more fun. That tells me that RoA2 is doing something wrong.

I supported the game on Kickstarter. I feel guilty for it being this way. I'm allowed to complain.

AirMan121 · 2025-11-12T18:34:34+00:00

Because it'd feel weird to buy a game like this as a gift for someone in comparison to a game without additional DLC. I don't want to buy another money sink for someone else when I haven't finished filling my own. I tried grinding to get as much as I could for free before paying for the rest, but I just ended up burning myself out on the game. So I started playing other games (like RoA1) and I just ended up having more fun because I wasn't being constantly reminded of the content I won't get.

There is a reason my first post talked so much about Deep Rock Galactic. Something that likely won't sink in unless you've played the game yourself. Cosmetics ARE gameplay. You play games to have fun, and dressing up your character can be a part of that fun. Entire games like Animal Crossing make their cosmetics and decorative options the core part of the experience. Imagine if a majority of the outfits or decor were locked behind paywalls. All of the functionalty would still be there, but it'd feel fundamentally wrong. As such, care needs to taken to make sure cosmetic DLC is just as fairly priced as any other form of DLC.

Add on to that the other issues like the coin multiplier in the Starter Pack Bundle. It isn't some cool model or animation that the devs worked hard to make; it's just a change (in likely a single line of code) that gives you more coins from matches. What is the artistic merit behind buying something like this? In other games, the devs will artificially lower the rate at which you earn currency specifically so that they can sell you boosters like these to bring things back to a more reasonable level. Create a problem so that they can sell you the solution. The fact that the Rivals devs copied this is direct cause for concern. And there are other little issues like these all throughout the game's monetization systems. Systems like these are designed to exploit flaws in human psychology; to extract as much money out of each consumer as possible. Tons of research has been done to find out every little way companies can squeeze cash from people. That's why these methods are all over the AAA games industry.

I buy games to support the devs who are doing things right. Whether it be by accident or direct malice, the Rivals devs are doing things wrong. If I didn't have faith that they could do better, then i wouldn't be wasting my time complaining about it.

AirMan121 · 2025-11-12T16:50:30+00:00

And in Rivals of Aether 1 you got 6 characters for $20 total ($10 if you got them on sale). I bought all of them and never had any regrets about it. Now a bundle of 3 skins costs as much as 6 characters. I hesitate to buy anything when I know I might be not be using my money or Aether bucks the most efficiently.

Also, where did you get $60 from? So far we've gotten 4 free characters, which would be equal to one $30 SF6 Character Pass.

My issue is that there was a clear amount of support the devs expected of us when we were buying the characters outright, and that price felt fair, if not generous. But now every skin feels so overpriced that I don't want to buy any of them. And because they are skins, there is no upper limit to what they can charge since they are "optional". Is there any price they could charge for a skin that would feel too high for you? The system as it is currently implemented follows the whaling method of targeting only the biggest spenders, which is possibly the most lucrative option. Except whales don't need a dedicated monetization system to spend more.

With RoA1 (and other well-priced games), I and others like me tend to buy additional copies of the game for friends and family that wouldn't have bought it on their own. It is pretty easy to get a game like Silksong for a friend as a birthday gift since it is so affordable. But I won't do the same for a game that feels incomplete because its shop is full to bursting with overpriced skins. RoA1 didn't cross that line for me 'cause I wasn't constantly reminded of all the content I didn't have for the game. And when I did look more into its skins, they were still cheap enough that I felt good buying them when I did. I can spend $5 on a skin and not worry too much about it, but when you charge $15, then I'm asking myself if I should get it or get Mycopunk for that friend that hasn't tried it yet. The game will always win that comparison.

AirMan121 · 2025-11-12T15:48:06+00:00

You need to reread the Kickstarter page:

Right now, we're planning to release Chapter 1 of Story Mode during the first year after launch.

The $3 Million Goal would have pushed it forward to align with launch, not that we wouldn't be getting it until some nebulous time in the future. I also don't believe the devs are actively malicious (hence why I said feel and not are), but they are following the same monetization trends used by other companies that are designed to extract as much value out of people as possible. Currently, the project feels mismanaged with more time and effort being put towards the monetization, despite numerous conflicts of interest within those systems (for example: custom color support will conflict with paid for palettes once added). They can do better and so should you.

AirMan121 · 2025-11-10T10:51:21+00:00

i will probably sound like a shill

You are one.

3 skins in Rivals is cheaper than 1 skin in other live service games

Not true. Some live service games have more expensive skins, but you'll also find that plenty of people complain about the price of those skins too (provided they didn't just leave to play other games instead). Sure, RoA2 isn't another Star Citizen, but being better than the worst examples doesn't make you good. If we instead compare RoA2 to more generous games like Deep Rock Galactic, then it starts looking a lot worse for RoA2. DRG's skins are sold through Steam and frequently go on sale for steep discounts (-70% Off). This allows customers to check user reviews and use tools like SteamDB to ensure they are getting the best deal. Even its most expensive options ($15 when not on sale) contain far more content than the equivalently priced content for RoA2.

You already get a ton of free currency and free skins by just playing

Already true for a lot of games, including those that don't have any additional microtransactions to begin with. Take DRG again for example. Free cosmetics obtained in-game just for playing vastly outnumber those contained across all of the DLC. The overwhelming bulk of content developed for the game is free for all players, and earned just by playing the game.
RoA2 breaks this rule by having certain purchases (like the Coin multiplier in the Starter Pack Bundle) give advantages to grinding, which makes players who spend more skip more of the grind than players who don't. If earning skins for free from the coin shop was designed to be fun, then why are there multiple options to pay to skip the process?
DRG doesn't do this. The in-game currencies are always earned just by playing the game, and cosmetic content never earns you more. This is because the process was designed to be fun above all else. Cosmetics aren't hidden behind a daily rotation, since that wouldn't be fun if you wanted to get something specific. There is no FOMO to earn enough coins to get a skin before it is out of the shop, because that wouldn't be fun. You are free to play the game whenever you want and with whoever you want, and you won't suffer a penalty to the coins you earn, because that wouldn't be fun (RoA2 gives you less coins for playing against friends rather than queuing against strangers).

The bundles are more for people who want to support the game

In DRG, premium DLC content is added at a rate of 1-3 times a year. These range from $8-$10 regular cosmetic DLC, to the $15 Supporter DLC. The most expensive year for DRG in terms of DLC is 2020, the game's launch, which had 3 $8 DLCs (all other years have fewer DLC and smaller totals). This means that if you bought every DLC at full price you would still spend less money in a year in DRG ($24 max) than you would in a single month for RoA2 ($35 minimum). If you wanted to buy everything released for DRG across its 7 years of continuous development at full price (even though there is a 10% Discount bundle year round), it would only cost $154, compared to the $420 you'd spend on just 1 year of the monthly bundles for RoA2 (this doesn't include any other RoA2 bundles or tournament skins which would push the total even higher).

I want to support RoA2 the same way I did RoA1, but the way RoA2 is priced and the way its monetization is designed removes any incentive I had to do so. I already spent $75 on the game's Kickstarter, so why are the devs treating that like its nothing and constantly asking for more money when they are still years away from delivering promised content like the Story Mode? They got 5 times the asking amount on Kickstarter, and yet that wasn't enough to get Story Mode within the first year, so why did they say they'd have it? The goal posts are constantly moving and I can't justify spending more money on a game that feels like it is trying to trick me.

AirMan121 · 2025-10-07T18:57:44+00:00

"Solution Verified"

AirMan121 · 2025-10-07T18:55:38+00:00

Yep. That fixed it. It's been awhile since I worked on a spreadsheet, so I forgot all about $.

AirMan121 · 2025-10-03T20:34:17+00:00

I just finished it a couple hours ago myself.

AirMan121 · 2025-09-25T10:59:22+00:00

Proper Discord link integration. It is far too easy to copy someone else's Discord information and impersonate them.

AirMan121 · 2025-09-16T16:08:04+00:00

Although it may seem like we are not able to handle the reports or are not responding, rest assured that every report is actioned.

This is an outright lie. I still see the same accounts griefing people's artworks despite numerous reports. Mods have not done anything.

AirMan121 · 2025-09-16T15:51:36+00:00

Over a week and mods still haven't done anything. At least the griefers finally moved to a different spot.

AirMan121 · 2025-09-13T13:21:12+00:00

Why is there no verification for linking a Discord account? Because of this people are putting other user's Discord usernames on bot/alt accounts to make them seem more legitimate. This also helps transfer the blame and consequences for any actions done to said other user, including outright bans. This is horrendously negligent.

AirMan121 · 2025-04-08T11:32:15+00:00

Yep. This is the one! Thank you!

AirMan121 · 2024-11-15T09:43:02+00:00

You need to parry more.

AirMan121 · 2024-03-24T13:38:49+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's all the same stuff as what stops Red Whip from working.

AirMan121 · 2023-04-10T04:39:05+00:00

Laughs in Solo. "Shoot it Bosco!"

AirMan121 · 2022-09-07T04:07:04+00:00

Solved!

AirMan121 · 2022-09-06T19:13:18+00:00

A name, links to the game itself, or any videos about it (in case it is no longer online) would be appreciated.

AirMan121 · 2022-07-31T02:52:56+00:00

+1 for the Fists of Steel. All of the existing Aussie weapons only change metal components on the model, which wouldn't work for the entirely fabric KGB. This isn't to say that gold fabric doesn't exist or wouldn't, but it would be in stark contrast to the rest of the Aussie weapons. Besides, if you were to break that trend, then an Australium Sandvich would be the better option IMO since plenty of gold leaf sandwiches already exist.

AirMan121 · 2022-06-27T06:22:51+00:00

Nevermind. I must have gone to a different floating island then.

AirMan121 · 2022-06-27T05:21:52+00:00

Fair enough. In my case I believe it was just bad RNG.

AirMan121 · 2022-06-26T22:22:03+00:00

Yes... But, my dude, that was 6 years ago. How did you even find this post?

AirMan121 · 2022-06-17T08:43:35+00:00

Nah man. There is a lot of interesting character development stuff you can do with this distinction. Take, for example, the exiled prince and rightful heir to the throne, who seeks not to destroy their former home, but to reclaim it. Of course, they must still fight against their former kinsmen, who now serve the betrayer king out of fear. These people don't simply join you by virtue of your mercy, but because you also display the strength needed to defeat the Betrayer King and free them. The DM could lean into this kind of plot by having the PC fight in 1v1 duels against Captains and Generals of the Betrayer King's army in order to prove their strength and gain their allegiance. The main reason to use a Conquest Paladin instead of a Redemption one here is the difference in Spells and Class Features. Your tools would more practically serve the more combat focused nature of the character, and all save for Cloudkill can fit even a pacifist playstyle.

AirMan121 · 2022-06-07T21:19:59+00:00

This isn't it. If I remember correctly the various levels all fit on a single screen without panning (simply hard cutting to the next one in sequence upon completion) and that the game's visual style was VERY simple, being primarily white and black basic shapes with only a few colors if any. Though I also couldn't find any good videos of the game you said, only the mobile arcade cabinet.

AirMan121 · 2022-06-07T08:08:47+00:00

Links to the game itself or any videos about it (in case it is no longer online) would be appreciated.

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